


Breathe

by babbitly



Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: Hospital, M/M, Pain, Sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-02
Updated: 2014-07-02
Packaged: 2018-02-07 04:26:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,664
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1885107
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/babbitly/pseuds/babbitly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is what Aomine knows: Your body instinctively knows what it needs when you’re born. So you breathe. Your subconscious mind isn’t even aware of the nerves that are constantly firing because it just knows. It knows to take in the oxygen, your lungs know to expand; your body knows that’s what you need to be functional and moving, and alive.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Breathe

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dwindlingflame](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dwindlingflame/gifts), [istehlurvz](https://archiveofourown.org/users/istehlurvz/gifts).



> blame letti and sam this is for them they bring the sadz

_Beep_.

Breathing’s an involuntary process of the body. That’s what Midorima had told him anyway, the last time Aomine had seen him. It was almost a year ago, back when Kagami and he had flown to Japan in their off season. They’d been talking about his classes at college, all Biology and Anatomy and Genetics, with his hopes to become a surgeon, and most of it had gone way over Aomine’s head. But the breathing thing had stuck.

Your body just instinctively knows what it needs when you’re born. So you breathe. Your subconscious mind isn’t even aware of the nerves that are constantly firing because _it just knows._ It knows to take in the oxygen, your lungs know to expand; your body knows that’s what you need to be functional and moving, and _alive._

_Beep._

Aomine raises his head from his hunched over position in the uncomfortable plastic lined chair and looks up at Kagami.

His eyes are closed and still behind his lids. His red hair is sticking out of the bandage that’s wrapped around his forehead, stained in a hauntingly similar color. The tubes and wires that are connected to him seem like they’re out of some weird science fiction movie. Like he’s a test subject or an alien.

But this isn’t a movie.

Those tubes and wires and cords and that fucking persistent beeping that’s been ringing in Aomine’s head in a slow, steady rhythm for the last two days are necessary. They’re the reason Kagami’s still alive.

Aomine closes his eyes and clenches his jaw, raising his hand up to his short blue hair to grab a handful and pull.

How is this happening?

Aomine reaches his hand forward and wraps it around Kagami’s on the bed, making sure not to jostle the IV line, and then opens his eyes. He stares down at his and Kagami’s intertwined together, the colors so stark in comparison in this strange sanitary lighting.

Aomine feels a chill erupt through his body and settle somewhere near his heart. Everything’s so cold in this room. The chair he sits in, Kagami’s hand, his whole entire body. He’d been cold since he felt the blood drain from his face when he swam back in from the surf a few days ago.

He’d felt his body turn to ice as soon as he saw Kagami’s stupid floral swim trunks on the body that was lying in the sand, four people surrounding him.

_He couldn’t see Kagami’s face, but he knew. He knew every inch of Kagami like the back of his own hand; he didn’t need to see his face._

_But what he could see was the trail of diluted blood that seeped towards the ocean with every push and pull of the tide. And he knew it would be ingrained in his mind for as long as he lived._

_He could feel his heart rate pick up and he sprinted the last few feet to stand over the lifeguard who was giving Kagami mouth-to-mouth, as a woman pressed a towel against his head trying to staunch the blood._

_There was so much blood._

_“Kagami,” he mumbled, his mouth falling open, going dry almost instantly._

_“We called 911, they should be here any minute,” he heard._

_He didn’t know who’d said it._

_He didn’t care._

_“C’mon, just breathe, just breathe,” the lifeguard mumbled, pressing his ear to Kagami’s chest._

_“Kagami.”_

_Beep_.

Aomine shakes his head trying as hard as he ever has to keep that memory out of his head. He can’t keep reliving that moment, not when what’s in front of him is worse.

There’s a blue mouthpiece covering Kagami’s lips and the tube protruding from it sticks out and trails down the front of his chest.

It’s giving him oxygen, helping to hopefully wake his brain up from the coma he’d been induced in for the last two days.

A coma.

A fucking coma.

Aomine feels his stomach roll and lets go of Kagami’s hand as he curls at the waist. He rests his elbows on his knees and splays his fingers through his hair on both sides of his head. The floor’s pristinely white as he looks down between his knees, trying to stop his head from spinning. It’s not working. 

He feels like his whole world is spinning.

He doesn’t have any control over this.

Or anything really.

Aomine feels the tears that he’s tried so hard to hold back spring to his eyes. He grips his hands tighter in his hair and tries to blink them away but they spill hot and fat down his cheeks.

It’s not something he can stop, just another thing he can’t strop.

“Kagami,” he says, his voice wrecked and rough. He bites his lip hard, he doesn’t care if it bleeds, and drags one hand down his face, “Just wake up. Please.”

“Please.”

 _Beep_.

_“We’re going to bring him out of the coma,” the doctor had said, as a nurse walked around the hospital bed and stuck a needle into Kagami’s IV line. She pressed her thumb down on the clear liquid in the syringe. AOmine watched as it fed into the tube and down Kagami’s IV line into his arm._

_“Is he going to be okay?”_

_“We can’t be sure,” the doctor said, in a monotone voice._

_“What do you mean you can’t be sure?” Aomine said, snapping his head around to glare at the Doctor who was staring down at his iPad in his hands._

_The doctor sighed and looked up to meet Aomine’s eyes, “We can’t be sure if he’ll wake up.”_

_Aomine could feel the blood leaving his face again, could feel his stomach tighten at the words, “Well how the hell do we know if he’ll wake up, how can you tell if he’s going to be-“_

_“We wait, Mr. Aomine,” the Doctor said cutting off his words. The doctor gripped his iPad in one arm and walked towards him. He placed a firm hand on his shoulder and squeezed, “The swelling in his brain has gone down, his EEG seems normal, but we just have to wait. I’m sorry I can’t give you anything more definite than that.”_

As the sobs wrack through Aomine’s body, his shoulders shaking, his back heaving with the effort, he can’t stop his mind from seeping into thoughts of what if.

What if he’d caught that wave instead of Kagami?

What if they had just done what Kagami had wanted to do two days ago and stayed home and watched movies?

What if the lifeguard had been too late?

What if all his work to get him breathing again was pointless?

What if Kagami was never coming back to him?

“Fuck.” He yells, tugging harder at his hair and sitting up.  He grabs Kagami’s hand and leans his head against the bar of the hospital bed.

He can’t even let himself think of a world without Kagami.

Because Kagami was like air to him, he didn’t know how else to explain it. It was like one of those automatic functions in his body that Midorima had talked about. It wasn’t voluntary how they came together. It was magnetism, it was encoded in their DNA, and it was the only thing he knew anymore, that this is where he is supposed to be.

With Kagami.

Who was alive.

And smiling.

_Beep_

And warm.

And breathing.

And not laying in this damn hospital bed, leaving Aomine here by himself.

Because if Kagami wasn’t breathing Aomine didn’t know how he’d be able to anymore. _._

“What the fuck is that?” Aomine growled, sniffing hard and lifting his tear stained face from the railing. A jolt of panic shot through Aomine’s chest, and went straight to his stomach.

The heart monitor.

He whips his head around, and stares at the black screen next to him, gripping Kagami’s hand tighter as he did.

The rhythm is steady and quicker than it had been in the last two days. Aomine feels his eyes widen as he watches the green line peak and fall.

He turns back to Kagami’s still form, his stomach tight with nerves and fear and hope and pain. He doesn’t even know what he’s feeling anymore as he looks over Kagami’s immobile form. His chest was moving in an even rhythm though. At least he was still breathing. At least he wasn’t-

Kagami’s eye twitches beneath his lid. 

“Kagami.” Aomine breathes out, his nerves on end, he doesn’t remember standing up but he is, he’s taking in every inch of Kagami’s form looking for any movement at all.

“Kagami.” Aomine says again, louder, calling for him this time. He needs him, he’d never had patience and he was done waiting. He needs Kagami to wake up.

He stares at Kagami’s face as his eyelids flutter.

He feels his heart soar and his hands begin to shake when those eyelids finally open, and Aomine sees the red eyes he’s so familiar with finally staring back at him.

“Kagami.”

Aomine stutters in a breath through his mouth and before he can even release it feels the tears stinging his eyes again, feels that familiar lump in his throat swelling. He leans his head down and presses it to Kagami’s, his sobs filling the room.

“Don’t do that to me again, you asshole.” Aomine chokes out into Kagami’s hair, his tears tickling a trail down his nose and falling in to the red strands. “Don’t fucking do that again.”

“I’m sorry,” Kagami says, his voice raw and muffled by the oxygen mask. But Aomine doesn’t care if he sounds like shit. He’s so damn happy because Kagami’s talking. Kagami’s alive, and awake, and _here_.

Aomine sucks in another breath, and inhales Kagami’s scent, letting it fill him up, letting his scent seep into his whole being. And even though Kagami’s the one who hadn’t been breathing, this breath feels like it’s the first one Aomine’s taken in his whole life.

_Beep._


End file.
